Stubborness

A friend complained recently that she kept seeing the indoor pool entry when she visited this blog; that means I haven’t written a new entry for a long, long time (: The reason for this was that my old computer had crashed again, for the millionth time. My niece is fed up with reformatting and reinstalling the programs so the poor old thing has been left in the comatic state for about a month.

I had been hunting for a cheap CPU tower for weeks, when I finally found the cheapest so far, $110 for a second hand Acer, a few days ago. The seller lives in South Coogee. That means a train ride to the city, a bus ride, and a 700 m walk to his house. I considered taking a suitcase to carry the tower back, but the only one in the apartment is so big I could fit in it comfortably. I considered the small shopping trolley that we have, but after a careful look, I found it too small. I rummaged around and found a doona bag. The size seemed perfect, so I chose the doona bag to take with me.

The address was easy enough to find. I arrived without much drama. The seller showed me the tower. I paid. He put the tower in the bag - it fit perfectly - wished me luck, and I started the journey home. Of course I expected a CPU tower to be heavy. I also expected myself to be as strong as Xena. I was right about the weigh. And I was wrong about Xena. I carried the bag for about twenty meters and had to put it down. I thought about taking a taxi. Then I thought, I’ll take a taxi at Central to save money. I took a deep breath and continued. I stopped again after twenty meters and changed the way I carried the bag. I continued again for twenty meters, stopped, continued, stopped to answer a phone call, continued and so on until I reached the bus stop. I thanked God because it was a downhill trip instead of uphill. Then I remembered that the walk home from the train station would definitely be uphill and I was more determined to take a taxi. I suddenly also appreciated the shopping trolleys that people took from the supermarket and left in the streets. If I couldn’t get a taxi, I prayed I would find one of these trolleys that I used to mentally complain about.

I got on the bus. It was so comfortable after lugging that bag that I didn’t want to get off. I finally got off, crossed the street and put the bag down, picked it up again, and cursed the long tunnel towards the ticket gate. I finally made it to the train. On the train I thought of all kinds of method to avoid carrying the bag again. I could leave it at the station while I went home to get a trolley or the suitcase, I could call my niece and asked her to help me carry the bag, I could call my sister-in-law and asked her pick me up at the station and drive me home. But I didn’t want to ask for help. I was really grumpy when I reached the station. My sister-in-law called just when I was looking around for a stray trolley. She offered to pick me up. I gave up and said yes.

I weighed the CPU tower this morning. It weighs about 11 kg. That’s not too heavy, isn’t it? I’m just definitely not Xena (((: but I am stubborn as a mule.